


breaking the rules

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, F/M, Hotels, Huddling For Warmth, POV Phil Coulson, Romance, Snow, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-15 23:58:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14152197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Coulson is not ready.





	breaking the rules

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tqpannie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tqpannie/gifts).



They haven’t been able to locate the potential Welcome Wagon recipient, the inside of their hotel room is as cold as the outside, and he’s looking out the window, watching the snow fall, covering the streets, without even taking off his gloves.

“It’s warmer under these,” he hears Daisy say behind him. He turns. She’s kicked her boots off, but other than that she seems to be wearing all her clothes under the bed covers. “You can come, I won’t bite.”

He can think of few things in life as blissful as that perspective - except maybe if you added some hot coffee and something sweet to eat.

“Unless you want me to?” she adds, wiggling her eyebrows, obviously joking but, still.

It both makes the perspective of walking over to the bed - one bed, the agreement almost silent at reception - even more desirable and completely paralyzing. And that’s what it is, because it catches Coulson in mid-step, one foot before the other, but unable to advance.

“I know, I know,” Daisy uncovers one hand so she can wave it off as a joke. “I know the rules.”

Coulson gives her a slight - scared? - smile, and continues walking towards her, as if to prove a point. They’re on a mission, albeit a failed mission so far; but a mission nonetheless and the rule was that they wouldn’t bring up their new relationship while on a mission. So it wouldn’t put them in danger, or the work, or the relationship, still so undefined, still so - Coulson cringes at the word, musty old word - unconsummated.

It’s his rules - for the benefit of him adjusting to the change in their relationship. A changed he denied and delayed as much as humanly possible, and now he’s setting rules to cope. And Daisy is so accommodating that Coulson suspects she’d agree to anything he asked. But that’s a sad thought, and it makes him angry at a world that has taught Daisy she has no right to demand things for herself.

Well, she has every right.

And sharing a bit of warmth while on a mission, Coulson knows it won’t kill him to give her that.

He takes off his shoes and gets under the covers. He takes off his gloves and his jacket. Daisy takes off her jacket too, now that the temperature is a bit more agreeable, at least inside the bed. They keep close, touching, not too close, a bit under a huddling for warmth kind of fiction, they could still be just agents helping each other on a cold night, they could still be friends, someone could look at them and still not suspect.

The warmth, the increasing warmth though, the one coming off Daisy’s body, the warmth Daisy is _lending_ him her own warmth, always generous Daisy, the warmth making it difficult to keep his defenses up - not defenses from Daisy, of course, he doesn’t think he ever had those, it was all from himself. It’s still that. But lulled by warmth and borrowed body heat they seem come down bit by bit.

“Yes, this is better,” he admits, openly enjoying the way his limbs have stopped aching with cold.

“I told you.”

She takes his hands in hers and rubs them together, warming both of them up. Coulson wonders how she does it, how she makes it look so natural, so casual. He has to think and overthink every touch they exchange now. And it’s part of the excitement of it all, and maybe Daisy doesn’t see it as casual, maybe she is overthinking it too and pushing through bolding, very intently deciding to take his hand in hers. But she makes it look miraculous.

He looks down at their fingers entwined. The contact is both calming and exhilarating - he feels that way about touching Daisy these days, every time, ever since their first kiss.They never touched much in public (or private), but now he actively avoids it. He’s not sure he can keep his emotions off his face. Good-humored as always, Daisy enjoys hiding and stealing kisses in dark corner (just never while on a mission).

Daisy seems content to wait for him, or rather, he doesn’t feel she thinks of it as waiting.

(if he didn’t know Daisy so well - not that he would ever regret that - this would be easier, if he didn’t know her own issues, how much more insecure it must be making her, this waiting, this waiting for sex; and it’s not that Coulson is not attracted to her - oh god, _it’s not that_ , if only he could tell her, but he’s afraid telling her would precipitate everything beyond his control - it’s that he is not ready, the way one is not ready for their first time, and it’s a a lot scary, not knowing what would happen, not knowing if he’s going to be the same person afterwards, Coulson is just not ready for that)

“Come here,” she says, and she makes him slip down the bed with her, so their heads are on the pillow. She nudges him so he’ll put his arm around her shoulders.

Coulson hasn’t had much experience with cuddling, he has to admit. Either he’s not very cuddly, or his past partners haven’t been. He wonders. 

She wraps her arms around his middle. With all these clothes on they can barely make out each other’s bodies. Coulson can’t still think about her body much - the few times they kissed, the few times his hand met her hand, or met the curve of her shoulder, her back, in new frightening ways, his thoughts couldn’t linger. He’s adjusting to them, to Daisy-as-something-more, something different than his old expectations of how their relationship had to be, of what role he had to play. And he had been playing.

She pulls the covers right up to their chins, their noses, and it’s a bit childish, this way of weathering the cold, something like building a blanket fort for themselves, and it makes Coulson smile. Daisy notices, but she says nothing.

“I hate the cold,” she says, wrinkling her nose for a moment, like the cold has personally offended her.

It makes Coulson smile, it gives him a thrill to be this close to her, how he can see all the wrinkles perfectly and he can stare and stare and Daisy would let him.

“I know,” he says.

Daisy tightens his grip around his chest. It relaxes him, ironically, relaxes his whole body that he feels slip down the bed as if half liquid. He drops his head until it’s resting on Daisy’s head, all that wonderful hair tickling his face.

“Did it get cold where you grew up?” she asks, all of the sudden.

Coulson has to think about it for a moment, conjure memories he had tried so hard to put away.

“Yeah, it did,” he tells her. “But I don’t remember much.”

Daisy makes a soft sound, and he watches him close her eyes. He puts his arm over hers on his chest, so she won’t let go of him even when she falls asleep, so they’ll stay just like this. The cuddling thing… he can see the appeal.

“Maybe we can go some day,” she tells him, eyes still close, voice getting heavier.

“To Manitowoc?”

“Yeah, together. So you’ll remember.”

He makes a wondering. non-committal sound. He imagines walking down the streets with Daisy. It’s getting hard to remember the details of a place he used to know like the palm of his hand - then again, it’s been decades, yeah, he is that old.

“Or it goes against the rules? Making plans together,” Daisy says. He feels she is almost baiting him, or somewhere between baiting and kindly teasing him.

He closes his eyes for a moment and imagines it again.

Walking with Daisy down the streets of his hometown.

Somehow the details come more easily, now that she’s by his side. He remembers the look of the pavements, the shadows the buildings cast. It’s easier, remembering or imagining, if Daisy is in the picture.

He opens his eyes.

The snow keeps falling out of the window, harder even, it looks like.

But in here he’s warm enough.

“No,” he says, pressing his mouth to her temple. “It doesn’t go against the rules.”


End file.
